Intervention at PS 118
by The 21st Century Pendragon
Summary: Storm hits at Hillwood (again). But Arnold and his class must confront their personal revelations to each other. More twists and turns.
1. Chapter 1

Welcome to my first-ever Hey Arnold! fanfic. Hope you may enjoy it. And I am open to suggestions from you.

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Lightning strikes and thunder clashes, signaling for a rainstorm to pour down on Hillwood. While that may incur instant class suspensions, as the storm was forecasted to be a Category 1 hurricane, P.S. 118 is not safe from the storm's wrath. Or at least, Arnold's class.

Speaking of which, when the rest of the classes were dismissed, Arnold's class still remains in their classroom. Everyone is anxiously waiting for Mr. Simmons to arrive to dismiss them. Each has his or her own gimmick while waiting: Arnold is staring at the blackboard scribbles, Gerald is rolling his pencil back and forth, Helga is conversing with Phoebe, Harold is struggling to wait while clenching his fists, Stinky is flipping through a picture book, Sid is rocking his chair while he relaxes his legs to his desk, Rhonda tries to tolerate the annoying noises while her face is buried to the desk, Eugene is humming "Singin' in the Rain", Nadine is staring in the rain and Curly is scribbling.

Leaks start to drop from the ceiling, reminding them of a time that they got stranded in school while it flooded outside. Though, Arnold is confident that history will not repeat itself, and it will not flood.

However, that does not stop the impatience of the students.

"Will you stop that?!" Rhonda scolds Eugene from his happy humming.

"What? I'm just trying to pass time," Eugene says.

"So do we!" Harold shouts, prompting the class to burst into chaos of arguments. As the class president, Gerald tries to calm everyone down, but he gets into an instant argument with Helga Pataki. Arnold tries to fend off the situation, to no avail as well.

Suddenly, someone is knocking on the door, to which Arnold instantly answers. He opens to see Principal Wartz on the other side.

"Principal?" he utters.

"Arnold, what's the ruckus in there?" the principal asks.

Before he could answer, Arnold dodges an incoming crumpled paper, which was thrown to his position. "Homeroom chaos…while waiting for Mr. Simmons."

"Simmons hasn't dismissed you?" Wartz replies, "My goodness, he was probably finishing your grades…at this moment in time, when it storming outside."

"So does this mean we're dismissed?"

"Nonsense. You need the formal permission from your homeroom teacher. Call him at once. And please tell your classmates to calm down. And…get home safe." With that, Wartz rushes away from the school and hurries to catch a cab all the way home.

Taking initiative, Arnold steps on the desk and signals a cowbell for everyone to calm down and pay attention. "Guys! Guys! I know you want to get out of here. I do too. But we must call Mr. Simmons have us be dismissed."

"Arnold's right! We better drag Simmons here, or we're doomed!" Harold halfheartedly encourages his classmates, prompting them to cheer for him.

"Yeah, and exactly where exactly can we find Mr. Simmons?" Gerald asks, which Harold gets taken abak, and his motivation dies instantly, along his classmates'.

"He told us 'he would be handling paper work in a jiffy'," Phoebe implies.

"Right, and how long was that 'jiffy' gonna be?!" Helga berates her.

"Alright we get it!" Arnold responds, "Look, if we need to get home at once, we need to find Simmons right now. And now."

"Was it even necessary, football head, for us to call him, just for us to get outta here?!" Helga berates Arnold. "We can just skedaddle our way outta here, because of the storm!"

Just as Helga shouts, one lightning strikes, making thunder clasp in another second.

Though Helga makes a point of exiting the school premises as necessary as now, given the circumstance, Gerald realizes the point of authority from the homeroom teacher. With that, he convinces the class, "Okay guys, Mr. Simmons is part of this family. We need him to get us home now."

"Yeah, but how we gonna find him?" Sid asks.

Another lightning and thunder strike, causing for the electricity to blackout in the school. The classroom lights blink and turn off for a while, until they light back again.

"We need to find him," Gerald convinces the others, to which they agree. But as the former opens the door, the whole class sees the hallways covered in darkness. At that revelation, they retreat back. "Okay, who wants to volunteer?"

Then, each of them rejects Gerald's proposition.

Arnold, on the other, grabs a fishbowl filled with marbles and suggests, "Okay, let's be fair and let's draw lots. The one who gets red marble must find Mr. Simmons. Are we good?"

"This is inconceivable. Why should we strive to this very effort?" Rhonda objects.

"Rhonda, he's your teacher," Arnold stresses.

Offered with no choice, Rhonda reluctantly picks a marble. And the rest follows without revealing what color they picked.

"Ready?" Arnold asks. "Alright, let's see what we have."

And as the entire class opens their hands, it is revealed that Eugene picked the red marble.

Though hesitant, Eugene is willing to search for their homeroom teacher. "Okay, I guess it's me who takes the bait. I'll go."

Feeling sorry for his recurring injuries, Arnold takes a dive for his friend. "No Eugene, I'll do it for you."

"Oh just let him go, football head!" Helga objects.

"Oh, so you're taking authority now?" Arnold argues to her.

Then the class resumes their argument. It continues to escalate until it goes out of control.

However, seeing the scale of their wedges to each other, Gerald steps up and proclaims, "Okay guys! We're going nowhere when we argue like animals. I'll look for Simmons."

"Gerald, maybe we can all discuss this causally," Arnold insists.

"What other choice have we, Arnold?" Gerald asks him.

"None," Rhonda utters for him.

"Well, here goes nothing." As Gerald opens the door, he is instantly greeted by the dark hallways that they knew how it would turn out but never expect real terror. He then mutters to Arnold, "Hey Arnold, remember that time when we went down the sewers to retrieve your grandpa's gold watch?"

"Yeah?" he responds.

"Well, got the same feeling," Gerald expresses his fright.

"It's just the school hallway."

"You're right. Just the school hallway." With a deep breath and a gulp on his throat, Gerald proceeds to find for their teacher. He tells his classmates, "Just right in there, guys! I'll find for Mr. Simmons as soon as I can."

"Good luck!" Phoebe wishes him, to Gerald's delight.

After the class president has left the classroom, the chaos dies down in the classroom.

"What do we oughta do now?" Stinky asks.

Eugene humbly suggests, "Well, as what my old preschool teacher told me, she said that we should take time to sing along in a time of trouble…"

But Helga threatens him, "Sing one more time, and I swear you'll be in big trouble!" In response, Eugene cowers in fear and agrees to her terms.

"Well, any of us have any ideas?" Sid pronounces.

Just after that, he hears a screeching noise coming from the windows. Sid looks behind to see Curly trying to pierce through the classroom window with his pencil.

"Curly, what are you doing?" Arnold asks.

"Making a hole to get us out," he answers, "Do you know that in espionage movies, spies do this to infiltrate villain secret lairs?"

"Are you even a spy?" Rhonda confronts him. But as Curly is about to answer, she shuts him. "Not that spy. Gross. You're humiliating yourself."

To add to the insult, another lightning strikes, scaring Curly.

"Okay, we're all desperate. But let's just wait for Gerald, or let the storm pass. Then we'll be fine," Arnold guarantees, added with a shrug on his shoulder.

"Are you sure, Arnold?" Harold whimpers.

"I…I don't know. But I know we are safe here," Arnold assures.

Unluckily, the storm intensifies and water begins to leak to Arnold's head. He, along with rest of the class, looks above for the whereabouts of the leak. Though it is little in amount, the class can hear tremors coming from the ceiling. They get louder and louder and louder…until a gush of water bursts out from the ceiling tiles and splashes to Arnold. With the help from the class, Arnold tries to place the tile back, to no avail.

"I thought our classroom is flood-proof," Nadine implies.

Phoebe concludes, "Me too. But I might deduce that the rapid escalation of rainwater levels might have caused substantial overflow in our school's drainage system that…"

"That what, Phoebe?" Arnold continues.

"…we might be facing another situation of déjà vu," she finishes.

However, Phoebe's complex deduction puzzles the rest.

"I barely understand what you said," Sid comments.

"We are about to get flooded again!" Phoebe reiterates, stirring another panic in the class.

But Arnold takes control of the situation as he stands atop of the teacher's table. "Guys! We're not doing anything when we panic. We need to evacuate somewhere else in the school. Fast!"

"How about in the student lounge?" Rhonda suggests.

"We have a student lounge?" Sid questions her.

"Just follow me!" And with that, as the flood gets heavier in the classroom, the group rushes out of it and follows Rhonda to the so-called "student lounge" on the upper floors.


	2. Chapter 2

Meanwhile, Gerald slowly makes his through the dark halls. The school has been cleared when the immediacy for evacuation was announced. So clearly, no one is in the school premises at this point, but the class of Mr. Simmons.

One step at a time, he goes. On every creak on the floor, he goes. And gradually, he gets farther away from the outside lights till it becomes zero visibility.

"Mr. Simmons? Mr. Simmons? Where are you, Mr. Simmons?"

But only the echoes ever respond to him.

Fear is trembling on Gerald's face. Sweat starts to flow as his legs shake in every step.

Suddenly, he hears a splash of water. "Who's there?"

From the sound of it, it could have been a person who got a splash from the weather. But that gets answered when he feels a smooth ebb on his left shoe. As it then proceeds to his right shoe, Gerald dips his hand to the floor that a flood is surging on his way.

"MR. SIMMONS!" But no one answers.

Not seeing where he can go, Gerald rushes out hysterically. His path is non-existent. It is just the floodwater and the gust of wind passing through the halls that can guide him.

But out of his panic, he slips towards a staircase on his right.

A thud, he rolls down. And another, he rolls more. Until he arrives on the downstairs flow to see the photocopier room still with its light open. "Oh, good grief."

Gerald opens the room to finally see his homeroom teacher printing copies.

"Gerald, what are you doing here?" Mr. Simmons asks.

"Finding you!" Gerald replies hysterically, "We need our teacher to dismiss us!"

"Wait, I have told Rhonda that you could be dismissed."

"Since when?!"

"Well…was it Rhonda?" Mr. Simmons then recalls the time a while ago when he is bounded with tons of paper works to finalize his class' grades. With a stack of papers in his hand, he planned to skip homeroom, with the storm thankfully giving advantage. He then remembered mistakenly calling out a random girl, whom he thought was Rhonda (because of her short black hair and red shirt), to dismiss the class if he hasn't arrived by normal class dismissal. "Was it Rhonda? I know it's Rhonda because of her hair…"

Even though he finds his teacher's excuse unreasonable, Gerald insists, "Okay, we can have time for that later. But we have to go!"

Abruptly, the floodwater starts to enter the room.

"Gerald, help me with this!" Mr. Simmons instructs to place the leftover papers to a nearby table. He then pulls the plug from the copier machine and covers the outlet.

"What's that for?" Gerald asks.

"To avoid an electrical shock," he explains. "Remember Gerald: water is a strong conductor of electricity."

After that, Mr. Simmons packs his papers, while Gerald searches on the storage cabinet to retrieve any helpful item: a flashlight.

"Woah, glad this room can be handy with stuff," Gerald remarks.

With the help of a flashlight, the two exit the room as the floodwaters enter the downstairs hall.

"I think if we can avoid the downpour, which would come from the right side, I think we should go left," the teacher suggests.

"Are you sure, sir?" Gerald asks.

"We have to try," Mr. Simmons confirms.

"We have to get back to class. I am sure Arnold and the others are too eager to get out of here."

* * *

Speaking of the class, Rhonda helps them get access to the secret student lounge, which was exclusive for privileged students, student council officers, class presidents and school club members. It was previously the music room. But thanks to their success in competitions, and the remains of the place being used for student meetings, the room was converted to a "student-only" lounge, as suggested by Rhonda. Though she decides not to reveal that detail for the moment. "Here we are. Definitely the coziest place in here."

The class is astounded by the luxurious detail of the room, which is equipped with bean bags, bookshelves, coffee tables, gym equipment, board games, student paraphernalia, stuffed toys and their own fridge.

"This is like something out of college," Sid remarks.

"More like a secret café or something," Stinky adds.

"I could get used to this all day," Harold reacts. Just right then, he jumps to a bean bag which causes for the Styrofoam beads to burst out to the kids.

"Harold!" Rhonda coaxes him.

"Sorry…"

Meanwhile, Arnold, still worried about Gerald and Mr. Simmons, wonders about their situation. But seeing it will take time to wait for them, he decides to take matters to his own hands. He checks out the window to see the magnitude of the rainfall, which moderately floods the streets but severely affects the pedestrians.

"Phoebe, check the rainfall here," Arnold probes. "Do you think there's a chance for us to make it out?"

"Well…" But before continuing, Phoebe spots a pedestrian whose umbrella is tattered. "I think it's best if we wait it out soon."

"How long?"

"I don't know. Perhaps like last time, if the school gets submerged in flood, it is best we evacuate to the rooftop." The two then suddenly spot floodwater occupying the lower level of P.S. 118. "Yep. Déjà vu."

Arnold then huddles the gang. "Uhmm guys…"

But the entire class is busy lollygagging around the well-decorated student lounge.

"Excuse me guys!"

Still, they do not respond to his call. It seems that weather-related panic has yet to catch on their heads.

"Well, they could use some convenience for a while," Phoebe says.

Suddenly, Harold hollers to them, "Hey guys! Microwave burritos in the fridge! And look, they even have their own microwave!"

"Harold, don't you take anything from there!" Rhonda coaxes him.

But Helga corners her. "Okay, you might do some explaining as to why your 'lounge' has some resource that cost a million bucks that was hidden away from us!"

"Are you even a member of a club, Helga?" Rhonda retorts.

"I was a member of the Allergy Awareness Group, though I don't know if that is a school club, or just some guys at school who offered me pamphlets," Eugene recalls.

"Oh, who cares? We got food now!" Harold then places the microwave Mexican wraps inside the expensive pantry accessory. But it is not yet operating. "Huh? It's not working!"

"Was the microwave even on? Or plugged?" Helga brings it up.

"No, wait. Yeah it is," Sid confirms, then inserts the plug to a nearby outlet.

But Rhonda pleads, "Wait no!"

Sure enough, the plug short circuits that causes a power surge in the entire room and in one loud spark, leaves it without power.

"Well, that didn't surprise me at all," Helga utters, then places blame on it, "Way to go, big nose!"

"We're out of power!" Harold shrieks that turns everyone to shriek. Now, the weather-related panic has caught on their heads.

"That's just great," Arnold utters in dismay of the course of events.

"We can just wait for them to calm down, then we could discuss the plan," Phoebe contemplates. "I just hope Gerald is fine."

"He will be. He is a bold kid," Arnold assures.

Just at that moment, Arnold unintentionally leans his hand on a box on the table he is sitting on. The box has a label that says "P.S. 118 Facts Untold". Only the suspicion on his eyes could define his expression.

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 **Just for the record, I finished this chapter while finishing _Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie._ It was fine and all, but it has its problems on plotting and character development. Well, at least it's better than the original movie. And I have fun seeing one of my favorite TV shows get a well-deserved follow-up to solve the cliffhanger episode.**


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